One tiny upside to all this economic mess: as finance firms look to bolster their balance sheets by building deposits, the competition is on for your small-potato savings. Even as Treasury yields touch zero, you can still find CDs and money-market accounts paying north of 3.5%.
After the Federal Reserve slashed a key interest rate in mid-December from 1% to almost zero, 12-month CDs were still yielding 1.92% on average, the same as in April, according to Bankrate.com
What's keeping deposit yields from plummeting along with everything else? Part of the answer is desperation. Among the companies offering the...